


The Rot in the Wood

by Nautilusopus



Series: FFVII Halloween Week 2020 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Gen, Human Experimentation, Identity, Memory Loss, Minor Body Horror, Ship of Theseus, a retrospective, crisis core and dirge still not canon and can suck it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27194819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautilusopus/pseuds/Nautilusopus
Summary: On the nature of change, in which Cloud goes through many things since the burning of Nibelheim.(Written for FFVII Halloween Week 2020: Day 1 - Frankenstein)
Series: FFVII Halloween Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985228
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	The Rot in the Wood

**Author's Note:**

> Hahaaaaaaaaa this is unfinished and I have almost nothing prepped this year, we're writing day-of motherfuckers
> 
> Live dangerously

Cloud got his first dental filling when he was seven.

His mother had told him they were lucky they hadn't had to pull the entire tooth: There wasn't actually a dentist in Nibelheim, so they'd had to wait and plan out a trip to a larger city a few hours west and have it taken care of there. And once they'd actually gotten him to the office, it had been another struggle to actually get him into the chair, and a greater struggle still to stick him in the gums with novocaine as some mock-soothing music blared over tinny speakers, since Cloud had heard the words "drill" and "mouth" in close proximity and decided he'd rather take his chances with infection. They'd only actually managed the procedure once he'd exhausted himself from flailing against his put-upon mother's grasp and they were finally able to restrain him, but once it was all said and done he'd spent hours trying to stare at his filling in the mirror. You couldn't even tell which tooth it had been, really. It looked just the same as it had before. What if he just forgot it wasn't his?

He resolved right then and there to never forget, and then he forgot anyway some time in the next three years.

* * *

It didn't become relevant again until much, much later, when he found himself strapped to another examination chair, too weak from blood loss to struggle in any meaningful way.

Hojo found the teeth with the filling in them -- all three of them. Plus another four cavities that had formed in his time imprisoned in the lab.

"It's a waste of resources, is all," said Hojo offhandedly. "The human body is inefficient in these ways. I'd just as soon make sure it's a nonissue as I would give them access to anything plastic they can sharpen."

Cloud would have killed for some novocaine.

What they wound up replacing his teeth with wasn't quite artificial, wasn't quite organic -- some kind of ceramic they'd infused into the tissue. It wasn't long before they got the idea to do the same to his bones, and it had been several more painful months on top of everything else before it was all replaced by the compound, and another couple more months on top of that before he had recovered enough to walk.

Not that he was in much shape to do much walking by the time it had all healed, anyway, after they’d moved onto replacing everything else.

* * *

Strictly speaking, he wasn't human anymore. His genes weren't his genes. His blood wasn't his blood. His mother was no longer his mother.

Hojo never bothered to explain much of what he did to them, and the combination of mako poisoning and the voices murmuring away in the back of his head made it harder still to understand much of what he was told as well. Yet there was no ambiguity left in what was being explained to the lab aides, as Cloud looked on, struggling to suck down lungful after wet, sticky lungful of air.

"...no mistaking it," said Hojo, gesturing to some readout he couldn't see. "Look here -- at this point there are more genetic markers in common with Jenova than the subject has with any human." He frowned. "We're still massively behind schedule, though. Genetic integration can only progress to the point we need it as long as Jenova believes its host has..."

The world drifted out of focus again. Cloud closed his eyes, imagining he could feel his cells warping and changing and crawling around under his skin, and tried not to be sick.

* * *

Someone was holding his hand. Cloud thought so, anyway. It was so hard to know what was real anymore.

Not Cloud, certainly. Not the boy from Nibelheim, who grew up and joined Soldier. He knew that now. Everything he'd thought he had known about himself -- his entire life, what he'd been through, how hard he had worked, what anything he'd ever accomplished had meant, the knowledge that at the very least even if he had no one, even after what he'd lost, even if he could never hope to be so lucky as to ever have anyone else again, at least he'd achieved his dream, hadn't he? -- had been carelessly discarded and revealed as little more than wishful thinking. Substanceless. Empty.

He wasn't in Soldier. He wasn't Cloud Strife. He wasn't anyone. He didn't even have a number.

The hand was grounding, at least, assuming it was there at all.

* * *

He never quite remembered everything he’d lost. Not all the way. He'd been missing too many memories anyway, robbed of the earlier parts of his life by the mako and Jenova and the simple passage of time and fallibility of human memory.

He had memories of Tifa's memories, at least. The things he'd seen in the Lifestream, the vague impressions he'd inadvertently copied from her that day at the train station -- it was enough to fill in the gaps.

And there were a lot of gaps.

Tifa couldn't remember Zack for him, either. Cloud was left to do that on his own. How in the world could someone that important to him just vanish from his life, like he'd never even existed? He'd meant the world, Cloud had thought. He'd meant the world, and now look.

Maybe he _hadn't_. Who could even tell anymore? The memories that were gone were just gone, and those parts of Zack, and himself, were gone with him. He just had to accept that.

* * *

There was gentle sun on his face, and the distant sound of pedestrian chatter, and a quiet peace settled into his chest. He hummed to himself as he worked his way through a broken microwave, slightly off-key, a tune he could barely remember from some half-forgotten dream looping its way through his head.

Ice clinked against glass behind him, and Cloud looked up from his repair work to see Tifa had brought him some leftover lemonade from Barret's visit the other day. She was staring at him, a faintly amused smile on her face, nodding absently as he thanked her for the drink.

"What's up with you?" he asked, taking a swig. Stuff like this always used to make his teeth hurt.

"Nothing," said Tifa. "It's just, I don't think I ever really heard you sing before. If that counts as singing."

"It doesn't," he said shortly, doing his best to look extremely engrossed in his work to hide how pink he'd gotten.

"Of course not," said Tifa, still clearly amused. "You've just changed a lot, I guess. The Cloud I knew would never." She shrugged. "Have fun. I'll drag you back in at six for the dinner service."

Cloud barely heard the screen door bang closed behind her. He sat there and stared at the microwave he'd been fixing, screws and bits of wiring strewn about it that he'd been intending to replace anyway, seeing as how it would need to be redone from the ground up.

Something wasn't right about it, he thought, as he absently prodded his lower left canine with his tongue, trying his best to remember.

**Author's Note:**

> Note to self go back and edit this maybe? I say that every time and I never do.


End file.
